WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE SNARK TURNED OUT TO BE A BOOJUM (ALICE BOOK 4)

BY JOHN TAN; COPYRIGHT JOHN TAN, 202139,000 words

ALICE BOOK FOUR

Servants of arts all: thence, I say, not to sweat da small stuff –For didn't William Somerset Maugham once wrote (in The Moon and Six Pence) "Beauty is something strange and wonderful That the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world and the torment of his soul"?'

1 Donner and Blitz

JUST ONE MINUTE Alice had been quietly stirring in a lump of sugar and watching it impatiently to disappear inside her porcelain teacup, and listening to da adult talk; sayin' to herself, 'The brew is quite strong; but this evening with the snow coming down in high winter, there is a storm inside my teacup! The sugar just wouldn't melt properly tonight, I mean... on account of what? say so I couldn't.'

It was during the Christmas Eve Banquet and God's chosen servant Archbishop MacDonald was the chief guest of honor at the Deanery, a munificent and princely prelate who smelled of oleaster; and it was he with bowed head, had blessed the sumptuous spread. The children milled with the adults and they shared in the feasting although Alice's mother made sure they were not choked up with the repast. So the children were allowed to slip away from the tables.

Alice had been reading the ballad The Hunting of the Snark penned by her excellent friend, but it wasn't clear whether her hinted remarks were addressed to the poem, in her present indolent and peevish mood, or the present company, for that slim volume had tumbled off from her knee. She decided judiciously to take a sip of one and dip into da other again: savoring the tea from the teapot the Reverend Dodgson had been swinging to make it draw; scanning, again, the first few score lines of Fit the First (The Landing), as Lewis Carroll had so curiously and forcibly named it: --

'The crew was complete: it included a Boots –

A maker of Bonnets and Hoods –

('That would be useful to me,' she mused!)

A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes –

And a Broker, to value their goods.

Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense

Might perhaps have won more than his share –

But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,

Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was a Beaver, that paced the deck,

Or would sit making lace in the bow:

And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck

Though none of the sailors know how.

There was one who was framed for a number of things

He forgot when he entered the ship:

His umbrella, his watch, and all his jewels, and rings,

(Except, for a beat-up pinchbeck with faulty works and cheap cuff-links, thought Alice piteously, it would be...)

And the clothes he had bought for the ship.